"My reason for drawing a comparison to the "war on drugs" is that the comparible statement might be, "Make it illegal to sell drugs, and prosecute the drug lords." Great. Genius. Now go do it."
It's been done quite heavily in Columbia over the past few decades, but has fallen flat on it's face because when you're destroying the GDP of a poor country, you're going to face down more than one guy with a submachinegun. The 'war against drugs' has no real parallel with any grade of a war on spam, because there is no symmetric demand. Noone actually wants spam, and the only reason it arrives is people pay for delivery.
OTOH, drugs are high demand by the endpoints who can shift around their supply. If you view it as a tree hierarchy, you can see the difference quite readily.
"Second, even if you succeed in taking one guy down, another takes his place. It's not so easy."
You're kidding? If you go after a company that offers money for bulk-mailing and is willing to use any one of the hundred or so 'salted' hosts that actually track for connecting trojans, then you have someone you can prosecute. Making it uneconomical to operate.
If you don't think this is a valid way to tackle the problem, check out the $150 billion lawsuit against the tobacco companies, and they simply lied about the addictiveness of their product.
So, they're preparing to enact an _emergency_ order to go on a phishing expedition to see if the data is useful? Isn't this overstepping the bounds of uses that emergencies powers can be used for?
"Only seems reasonable, for homeland security reasons, that Homeland security dept should not allow Americans to read evil foreign websites"
They'd love to, but there would be a massive outcry on both sides of that fence, and the one interesting aspect is that the American people are quite sensitive to this.
But your real problem is entities outside of the circle of 'Government' enacting 'censorship' by using law.
"Americans who looked at cbc.ca or bbc.co.uk realized the world was against the war"
And Alistair Campbell did his damndest to try and rein the BBC in to the government line, which really underlined the differences between the BBC as a state-owned (ie paid for by the public) and any other 'state-controlled' media outlet by sending letters complaining about 'bias'. This didn't work, and although the Hutton report slammed the BBC, generally the public were quite happy with their reporting. The government managed to wound themselves severely over that amatuerish spin control, but their biggest mistake has always been underestimating the cynicism of the British people.
"So what's the problem with adhering to Chinese law if you set up office in China?"
"In order to create the best possible news search experience for our users, we sometimes decide not to include some sites, for a variety of reasons," says a statement issued by the company. "These sources were not included because their sites are inaccessible."
Point out where Google were saying that they were operating under a given law, Snookums.
"We should not expect companies to make political statements"
But just let politicians take their money, and wonder what happened to representation for the people? For your information, companies are involved in the political process now with the use of lobbying in pretty much all nations. Even though this is a side issue, I can't really let someone state that Companies have no political impact. For shame.
"highly competitive market of internet search"
Explain again the Google revenue model for News aggregation. No, hang on, I need some popcorn....
"IIRC, that's how they screwed over the original artist who drew (and owned copyright on) the original Spiderman comics. He was offered, and accepted, a percentage of the profits, which turned out to be almost worthless. Or something very similar - it's been a while since I read that."
Stan Lee, the owner of Marvel comics and the guy behind Spiderman. He was offered a profit share of the films that came to 1/10th of bugger all after the creative accounting so beloved of movies that meant that the highest grossing movies didn't make a profit. This is called a 'tax dodge'.
" It doesn't mean much if it is "just a PC" at this stage."
Seriously, go check out the footage. They appear to have a keyboard, mouse, controller and base unit that are 'complete' in terms that they look correct according to design. But the gameplay and menus were pure PC, and I still can't get my head around a supposed 'downstream' downloading system that allows for play while it's downloading. What I know doesn't gel entirely with what's been mentioned or claimed.
"So this isn't really anything new, it's just the set top box idea that is actually been pretty successful overseas."
I am overseas. FYI, the PSX 'home entertainment' unit has pretty much tanked in Japan, mainly because they're too close to announcing the PS3, and in the UK it's pretty much split between the Xbox, PS2 and the tail end of Gamecube sales.
"they are supposed to be a subscription model targeted at older casual gamers."
There's only one demographic that *could* actually subscribe to that, but everyone is going to consider it on merits and I doubt that they've done the market research that would allow them to gauge demand. Certainly the minimum subscription price is a *minimum*.
"My guess is an enhanced PC that is intended to allowing downloading games on subscription while preventing piracy at the same time."
And this is why it won't work.
"But I don't think they are as 'evil' as HardOCP is making them out to be either."
Me too, although it's not really a question of 'evil', but more coming good on claims. I have a very specific problem with claims being made that cannot be followed through, mainly because there do appear to be vast loopholes about saying such things with no evidence whatsoever. I have to say that 'Phantom' looks like a bust from both the business model point of view and the mismanagement of PR to the extent where they're suing a news outlet; the first thing you learn is not to sue someone who buys ink by the barrel.
...intersects with...
"SPs need to mandate a AV product and a hard ware firewall to get a connection, even for dialups."
Please tell me you aren't even in the running to take responsibility for your network's problems. It should be pointed out that most ISPs have a mandate in their ToS that tell people to use these things, but it's user education that stops them answering inbound blaster requests with 'yes'. As for 'hardware firewall', the only good one is around 2 inches of STP air.
The technology exists to cure these problems, but it's mostly because it's not a _requirement_ to have security in place; I'm with you as far as pointing out that this is largely a sociological issue, but on everything else you're on your own.
"Linux viruses are not impossible, all it will take is a script kiddie or two with an axe to grind and you guys are as boned as the rest of us."
Of course, we'd need to add in some handling of unprotected controls, make sure that we tried out security 'zones' rather than applied permissions, then tried to leverage open office on it's ability to act as an email editor.
Worms are more likely for Linux, but the average Linux user is usually competent enough to handle a firewall, not the least because of their status with other Linux users. Linux users are encouraged to think of security 'out of the box'.
This idea that 'ubiquity' is the key to the sheer number of attacks completely fails to take into consideration Linux in server areas, and is frequently spouted by people that don't understand that there is little difference between a 'server' or 'desktop' install of Linux.
"HardOCP just has an article up examining the insides of an early prototype."
The reason why I went for the E3 footage was to check out what Roberts was actually saying...early prototypes can sometimes be completely different to the finished model, but some of the things he was saying would have meant significant changes to the games themselves, such as the streaming downloads...that doesn't/didn't gel with the idea that a working prototype should still be in the stage where they didn't actually know *how* it would actually work.
"We're just a two-bit operation over at Whereisphantom.com trying to bring the truth to light."
I'm watching the E3 footage from infinium, and there does seem to be a prototype, but I'm astounded by the amount they want; $29.99 for a minimum committment of two years comes out at $730, which is a hell of a thing and tends to suggest that they're trying to get behind a subscription model.
So the question is, was this basically a repackaged PC in a nice box?
Hmm...yes, the UI does look suspiciously 'flash', and his language is very evasive, not to mention that the games used are PC.
"Is humanity throwing out the significant advancement of expressing thought with an abstracted language?"
Not only that, but do you really need a _bad_ facsimile of body language to stop people flaming because they're too darned quick to anger?
A friend of mine once said that he doubted that Shakespeare would have been enriched with emoticons.
This is a technology looking for an application, and bunging graphics on things appears to be the 21st century equivalent of bunging a clock on everything.
"The nice thing about HTML is that attributes and tags that your browser doesn't recognize, it has to ignore."
True enough, but the DTD is there to identify the HTML being used to indicate to browsers whether they should be using quirks mode. Mixing elements that 'might be ignored' with elements that are completely deprecated tends to give the air of something authored in frontpage, and reduces the 'standards' argument to so much hot air.
"Eventually:)"
No worries. I'm still getting through that myself, even though it's been standard for a long time.
"The commercial professionals who are lending a hand"
Fair enough.
"if you're interested in contributing to Slashdot"
I have so many balls in the air that I could make a tidy sum demonstrating juggling as a developer moving into project engineering, which isn't that much fun, but I'll certainly try and shuffle some time to help. Seriously, though, consider templating. Apart from separating the business logic from presentation, it does allow for easy modification down the line. I'm willing to bet that you have significant amounts of presentation littered through the code.
And it's a standard you don't adhere to, as the w3c validator shows. Don't cover hacks with handwaving to standards that are outmoded in the hope that people weren't around for 3.2. Attributes are wrong for 3.2 under 'body', the 'style' attribute wasn't around, you aren't encoding ampersands (hair splitting, I know) and what the hell is a NOBR tag?
Slap in a 4.0 transitional DTD and stop fannying around waving that arm.
"Honestly XHTML will probably just save us a little bandwidth"
Looking at this page alone, removing the inline CSS and using classes will save some, font tags another percentage...overall, I think probably about 25% of your bandwidth as long as you use a CSS cascade and don't get caught with horrendous classitis. XHTML is stripped down to the bare essentials for semantic markup, and nothing in slashdot appear to be semantic.
"That's a fun experiment but of course it's very different to change the code to emit HTML to a different standard."
Yes, you do it in the scripts, but first you start with a plan. You could consider using templates, too, although they tend to multiply out of control unless you have a planned development.
"XHTML theme"
A 'theme'? Jesus, this sounds promising...
"OK, resume flaming us and our sucky HTML"
Honeybunch, the only reason that people say these things is that there are actually some commercial professionals on here that would be happy to lend a hand, but you have no coherent method of farming out the work, let alone organising it. The word 'community' means more than the bunch of names in the authentication database.
"Every time the FTC or whatever government agency shuts down a spammer, how many more will pop up to fill the void?"
That's why you need to take the issue up with the company/entity that profits from the spam as well as the spammer. God knows that enough of them are actually *illegal* anyway.
But I won't believe that they're doing anything about the problem until they seriously start to go after the spammers acting illegally. It's not like it's that difficult to trace them.
"But the firearm the average person could/would own was fully comperable to the weaponry of the goverments professional soliders."
Artillery? I'd also point out that a muzzle loading musket is something you tended to deploy 'en masse' due to it's terrible range, making the average person 'cannon fodder' when facing the military. Incidentally, musket blocks need order to be even partially effective.
Compare and contrast with an AR15 in both effective range, rate of fire and accuracy, and you could _destroy_ a musket block before they became effective. That will never have occurred to the founding fathers, let alone such innovations as the LAW.
"Therefore all of these technologies should not benifit from first amendment protection?"
An interesting point, given that national boundaries are completely blurred on the Internet, and all media is liable to amendments that have revised exactly how free 'free speech' actually is. I assume that slander and libel both circumvent the freedom to say anything you want?
Can I also counter that with whether you consider that certain people should be counted as 3/5 of a free man, or can we agree that the document has NEEDED to change from time to time?
"second amendment refers to the govenment's permission to form militias, I believe to be incorrect for several reasons."
The largest being a semantical distinction on the language used?
I take the point and agree with you that I don't recall the language being used elsewhere (and that semantical construction of the time was _precise_, something that does get lost today), despite my hand-waving, but will also point out that this meant that anyone who interpreted the word 'tyranny' as being forced to do something you didn't want to do means license to take potshots at anyone, as happened with the first incarnations of the US Government. Like terrorism, 'tyranny' could become a word that people hang a lot more meaning on rather than dictatorship.
The point I'm trying to get to is that I'm extremely happy with Americans offing each other in creative ways. In Britain, people do it all the time. What I'm not happy about is the constant referrels back to a document that _has_ been revised in the past, or the idea that the founding fathers wanted everyone to have easy access to weaponry _without_ caveats as to it's use. For one thing, it's shattered democracy through the actions of assassins.
"TNT screwed JMS around so much, shuffled the order, wanted lots more sex + violence etc."
That makes a certain amount of sense, but I know the problem I had with it. The incidental music was completely off. It's hard to explain, but the music was frequently keyed to a mournful sound when the action or script needed something more.
I may be missing the added sex and violence...it certainly doesn't look anymore or less violent or flesh-flecked than Bab5 did.
I also question the now ubiquitous "female-alien-with-past-coming-to-terms-with-human ity's-lovable-quirkiness".
I was almost expecting 'What is this human thing you call "The nasty"?'
What Americans may not realise was that UK ownership meant NOT keeping a loaded pistol under your pillow.
"Perhaps a concerned citizen will purchase one of these stolen guns for the protection of his/her family."
Concerned citizen would then face a hefty book thrown at him for breaking extremely strict gunlaws, and leave his family visiting him in Wandsworth. Personally I rely on a sturdy bit of 2 by 2 and a sure knowledge that a bit of wood is only a weapon in implementation, rather than design.
"As an American, I have to say I agree with your points."
As a Briton, I'll ask you to shove over a bit on the tailslide to hell.
"The economy is loaded with debt - both consumer and governmental - on an incredible scale."
As is ours. Interest rates are rising, and we've had a fairly mild time of the last few years because people are not saving for pensions. Both the SEC and the Bank of England have been scathing about the performance of traders.
"The US dollar is due to collapse, dramatically lowering the standard of living for most Americans."
I don't think the currency would ever collapse; no government would allow it, and even when we had a run on trading the pound, we printed more until it was obvious that we were being raided. Several million wiped off the value of the currency in a little under 24 hours, but we're still around.
OTOH, there is a western tradition of redefining value by changing the balance of trade or demanding concession.
"Our dependance on petroleum continues to increase."
This should frighten everyone. Apart from being dependent on Middle Eastern concerns (despite reinvestment back into the nations), we're approaching the death of Fossil Fuels. I'm mindful that this has been mentioned before, but we're inside the margin where we're ekeing out as much from drilling and mining technology as we can with no way of covering the shortfall. In addition, my own country is going to suffer horribly because of hard winters and a complete lack of space to undertake stopgap measures to 'bridge' to a hydrogen economy.
"When will our minorities actually realize that they have little or no hope of a better future?"
I think they already do. We have a situation where smuggled immigrants are 'working off' their passage to this country. A similar situation occurs across Europe that feeds prostitution and a growing black market in 'cash only' labour. IOW, slavery. I don't consider it to be much of step towards indentured servitude once the contracts start to stipulate more and more control over the employee.
"Our military is growing, consuming more and more resources and people."
Are you sure about this? Our military is recessing wildly.
"The middle class - key to any democracy - is being squeezed to oblivion."
Ditto, but this is mainly due to the short term promises becoming the electoral bargains. The constant cry of 'they'll raise taxes' is becoming quite annoying because _all_ governments raise taxes, be it overtly through raising taxes, or devaluing currency.
"Our appointed president will likely win the next election through slandering his opponent, bringing four more years of secrecy and gifts to corporations."
That would be bad for everyone, and bear in mind that the Tony Blair re-election campaign has asked the Bush Administration to stop mentioning 'my good friend Tony Blair', because his polls take a nosedive. I hope Kerry wins, but only because he's 'Not Bush', which is a feeling I'm seeing more and more of. The trouble is that this, and 'going negative' are degenerate politics, and I loathe the idea of simply choosing the lesser of two evils. This is a horrendous state for the west to be in.
"The religious right has continued a century-old campaign to eradicate evolution in the classroom;"
When I started to find out about this being the case, I was astounded that people are standing for it. If the religious right is that powerful in terms of voting blocks, then there needs to be election reform to stop religion affecting elections. This is the very thing that separating church and state was about. What the hell is happening with the education system if creationism is on a direct par with evolution? What next, the tooth fairy?
" Our arrogance, hubris, is the key to our destruction. And I think it's coming much faster than most people realize."
"But the U.S. does have a point that recently it has represented the west and traditionally the west has made the quality of life better for the rest of the world."
In terms of local taxation not under colonial rule, yes, but usually those QoL increases have come at great cost, and the idea of an altruistic west starts to stagger a little when you consider what the balance of the equation is. Never consider trade to be philanthropy.
"but really when you think about all the people who won't need to die because their fire went out and there is no lightning around it makes sense."
People did not only use 'lightning' strikes as a method of producing fire and survived adequately up to that time; regarding the cost, I do actually have a good idea of how much Manhatten was sold for...
The thing is that it rapidly becomes a question of 'value'...slaves are a readily reproducing crop for slavers...
"production of information"
Let me just say that not everything is information. I know that pure physics survives on the concept of information, but realities such as grain are physical quantities rather than abstracts, and abstracting will never work when applied to the world itself.
"basically leave them developing tech"
Not while the US is trying to create wall gardens of intellectual property while using it's trading power to batter it's way into national law. Look at recent adoption of DMCA-like law in Australia, then look for the trade concessions. That's overt influence, and exactly the thing that causes extremists to start pointing fingers.
"You're not American are you? It's so hard to tell."
It's the accent.
"Let me ask where your country is on this list."
Fifth, hun. Now compare it to per capita. Take your time.
"Now where would I get that idea?"
Selective editing to match a given point of view.
The main point you missed is that you cannot sustain consumption and maintain low inflation. That's why the fifth country on your list is raising interest rates and looking at the looming problems connected with raising the bar on £1 trillion of personal debt.
"So, according to my buddy in England who I just IMed he says that's not true. He says to my question "how hard is it to get a gun license", "not so hard as long as you are clean, paperwork mostly""
No handguns. Handguns are illegal. No automatic weaponry, nothing that can be classed as an assualt rifle. In fact, you're pretty much limited to match rifles and shotguns. The Shotgun license requires that you store the guns in a locked metal cabinet separate from the firing pins and ammunition, and you can be spot inspected at any time.
" I notice on the page you link that England has a high rate of muggings and such."
Yeah, but they don't involve guns on the whole. Most of the time it's a bloke with a knife, and we're also prohibited from carrying a knife over four inches in length, and definately for 'self-defence' purposes. The high rate of muggings is usually for mobile phones, and something that shows a shift in social importance.
"Fit an proper is defined as not mentally ill, not a recently released (i.e. ten years) felon and that he's able to properly secure his weapons."
Given the shifting sands of what constitutes 'mental illness' and you can probably get a handle on why we in Britain are generally worried as hell by how tooled up America actually is. The guy who kicked off the Section 1 ban, Micheal Ryan, actually got all his arms together and wondered up a high street shooting at people before ending up in a school. He was licensed, but had emotional problems that wouldn't have been classified as mental illness unless he'd gone for evaluation.
The major reason that we're antsy is simply the desire to own a mechanism for killing people betrays a desire to own mechanisms for killing people. Gun fetishism. Especially worrying if people think that's where their power lies.
"This is a red herring and I wish gun rights folks (as I myself am) would stop using it."
Indeed. Because mainly the only way to fight the system is by using the system, rather than think there's a 'short circuit' to removing 'tyranny'. The constitution is fairly loose on actual definitions as to what constitutes 'tyranny' and is almost certainly a jibe at monarchism.
"The second ammendment is designed to allow the states to form militias"
Which was going to be the only way that the fledgling government would have been able to fight a concerted attack by the 'Old world' at the time. A lot of the constitution was written during a particular time and has not aged that well. Certainly the arms they were considering did not include armour-piercing rounds from a fully automatic weapon.
America itself has a problem in trying to control nuclear proliferation if it's going to dally about trying to 'trim' Billy-Joe Bob's arsenal
Which is why there's a black market service industry springing up to help, surprisingly not backed by organised crime, but generally of people helping out other people. In fact, the black market has rapidly become the 'real' P2P network.
However, I'm hoping that they do this, then it removes the excuse of 'piracy' from the crappy DVD sales of 'Gigli'.
"Yep, sounds like pay-per-view to me."
We knew it was coming. Hell, even the idea of closing the analog loop was intended to push them in the direction of higher control, but personally I can live without TV if it comes to that, and this could be the death knell for media in general; people aren't necessarily very politically aware, but start cutting into their TV time....
Slashdot Mirror
"My reason for drawing a comparison to the "war on drugs" is that the comparible statement might be, "Make it illegal to sell drugs, and prosecute the drug lords." Great. Genius. Now go do it."
It's been done quite heavily in Columbia over the past few decades, but has fallen flat on it's face because when you're destroying the GDP of a poor country, you're going to face down more than one guy with a submachinegun. The 'war against drugs' has no real parallel with any grade of a war on spam, because there is no symmetric demand. Noone actually wants spam, and the only reason it arrives is people pay for delivery.
OTOH, drugs are high demand by the endpoints who can shift around their supply. If you view it as a tree hierarchy, you can see the difference quite readily.
"Second, even if you succeed in taking one guy down, another takes his place. It's not so easy."
You're kidding? If you go after a company that offers money for bulk-mailing and is willing to use any one of the hundred or so 'salted' hosts that actually track for connecting trojans, then you have someone you can prosecute. Making it uneconomical to operate.
If you don't think this is a valid way to tackle the problem, check out the $150 billion lawsuit against the tobacco companies, and they simply lied about the addictiveness of their product.
So, they're preparing to enact an _emergency_ order to go on a phishing expedition to see if the data is useful? Isn't this overstepping the bounds of uses that emergencies powers can be used for?
"Gartner is for large company CIOs, suits that don't understand technology and want their business decisions fed to them ground up into a nice paste."
We know.
But it's quite nice to NOT see Gartner suggesting that Windows is more secure, n'est pas?
I'm looking forward to the Forbes article, "Making money is for chumps, we show you real happiness".
Well, I can dream.
"Only seems reasonable, for homeland security reasons, that Homeland security dept should not allow Americans to read evil foreign websites"
They'd love to, but there would be a massive outcry on both sides of that fence, and the one interesting aspect is that the American people are quite sensitive to this.
But your real problem is entities outside of the circle of 'Government' enacting 'censorship' by using law.
"Americans who looked at cbc.ca or bbc.co.uk realized the world was against the war"
And Alistair Campbell did his damndest to try and rein the BBC in to the government line, which really underlined the differences between the BBC as a state-owned (ie paid for by the public) and any other 'state-controlled' media outlet by sending letters complaining about 'bias'. This didn't work, and although the Hutton report slammed the BBC, generally the public were quite happy with their reporting. The government managed to wound themselves severely over that amatuerish spin control, but their biggest mistake has always been underestimating the cynicism of the British people.
Point out where Google were saying that they were operating under a given law, Snookums.
"We should not expect companies to make political statements"
But just let politicians take their money, and wonder what happened to representation for the people? For your information, companies are involved in the political process now with the use of lobbying in pretty much all nations. Even though this is a side issue, I can't really let someone state that Companies have no political impact. For shame.
"highly competitive market of internet search"
Explain again the Google revenue model for News aggregation. No, hang on, I need some popcorn....
Right, ready.
"IIRC, that's how they screwed over the original artist who drew (and owned copyright on) the original Spiderman comics. He was offered, and accepted, a percentage of the profits, which turned out to be almost worthless. Or something very similar - it's been a while since I read that."
Stan Lee, the owner of Marvel comics and the guy behind Spiderman. He was offered a profit share of the films that came to 1/10th of bugger all after the creative accounting so beloved of movies that meant that the highest grossing movies didn't make a profit. This is called a 'tax dodge'.
" It doesn't mean much if it is "just a PC" at this stage."
Seriously, go check out the footage. They appear to have a keyboard, mouse, controller and base unit that are 'complete' in terms that they look correct according to design. But the gameplay and menus were pure PC, and I still can't get my head around a supposed 'downstream' downloading system that allows for play while it's downloading. What I know doesn't gel entirely with what's been mentioned or claimed.
"So this isn't really anything new, it's just the set top box idea that is actually been pretty successful overseas."
I am overseas. FYI, the PSX 'home entertainment' unit has pretty much tanked in Japan, mainly because they're too close to announcing the PS3, and in the UK it's pretty much split between the Xbox, PS2 and the tail end of Gamecube sales.
"they are supposed to be a subscription model targeted at older casual gamers."
There's only one demographic that *could* actually subscribe to that, but everyone is going to consider it on merits and I doubt that they've done the market research that would allow them to gauge demand. Certainly the minimum subscription price is a *minimum*.
"My guess is an enhanced PC that is intended to allowing downloading games on subscription while preventing piracy at the same time."
And this is why it won't work.
"But I don't think they are as 'evil' as HardOCP is making them out to be either."
Me too, although it's not really a question of 'evil', but more coming good on claims. I have a very specific problem with claims being made that cannot be followed through, mainly because there do appear to be vast loopholes about saying such things with no evidence whatsoever. I have to say that 'Phantom' looks like a bust from both the business model point of view and the mismanagement of PR to the extent where they're suing a news outlet; the first thing you learn is not to sue someone who buys ink by the barrel.
"This is a serious threat and...."
...intersects with...
"SPs need to mandate a AV product and a hard ware firewall to get a connection, even for dialups."
Please tell me you aren't even in the running to take responsibility for your network's problems. It should be pointed out that most ISPs have a mandate in their ToS that tell people to use these things, but it's user education that stops them answering inbound blaster requests with 'yes'. As for 'hardware firewall', the only good one is around 2 inches of STP air.
The technology exists to cure these problems, but it's mostly because it's not a _requirement_ to have security in place; I'm with you as far as pointing out that this is largely a sociological issue, but on everything else you're on your own.
"Linux viruses are not impossible, all it will take is a script kiddie or two with an axe to grind and you guys are as boned as the rest of us."
Of course, we'd need to add in some handling of unprotected controls, make sure that we tried out security 'zones' rather than applied permissions, then tried to leverage open office on it's ability to act as an email editor.
Worms are more likely for Linux, but the average Linux user is usually competent enough to handle a firewall, not the least because of their status with other Linux users. Linux users are encouraged to think of security 'out of the box'.
This idea that 'ubiquity' is the key to the sheer number of attacks completely fails to take into consideration Linux in server areas, and is frequently spouted by people that don't understand that there is little difference between a 'server' or 'desktop' install of Linux.
"Give that man a prize."
:oP
"HardOCP just has an article up examining the insides of an early prototype."
The reason why I went for the E3 footage was to check out what Roberts was actually saying...early prototypes can sometimes be completely different to the finished model, but some of the things he was saying would have meant significant changes to the games themselves, such as the streaming downloads...that doesn't/didn't gel with the idea that a working prototype should still be in the stage where they didn't actually know *how* it would actually work.
"We're just a two-bit operation over at Whereisphantom.com trying to bring the truth to light."
I'm watching the E3 footage from infinium, and there does seem to be a prototype, but I'm astounded by the amount they want; $29.99 for a minimum committment of two years comes out at $730, which is a hell of a thing and tends to suggest that they're trying to get behind a subscription model.
So the question is, was this basically a repackaged PC in a nice box?
Hmm...yes, the UI does look suspiciously 'flash', and his language is very evasive, not to mention that the games used are PC.
"Is humanity throwing out the significant advancement of expressing thought with an abstracted language?"
Not only that, but do you really need a _bad_ facsimile of body language to stop people flaming because they're too darned quick to anger?
A friend of mine once said that he doubted that Shakespeare would have been enriched with emoticons.
This is a technology looking for an application, and bunging graphics on things appears to be the 21st century equivalent of bunging a clock on everything.
"The nice thing about HTML is that attributes and tags that your browser doesn't recognize, it has to ignore."
:)"
True enough, but the DTD is there to identify the HTML being used to indicate to browsers whether they should be using quirks mode. Mixing elements that 'might be ignored' with elements that are completely deprecated tends to give the air of something authored in frontpage, and reduces the 'standards' argument to so much hot air.
"Eventually
No worries. I'm still getting through that myself, even though it's been standard for a long time.
"The commercial professionals who are lending a hand"
Fair enough.
"if you're interested in contributing to Slashdot"
I have so many balls in the air that I could make a tidy sum demonstrating juggling as a developer moving into project engineering, which isn't that much fun, but I'll certainly try and shuffle some time to help. Seriously, though, consider templating. Apart from separating the business logic from presentation, it does allow for easy modification down the line. I'm willing to bet that you have significant amounts of presentation littered through the code.
"That's a standard."
And it's a standard you don't adhere to, as the w3c validator shows. Don't cover hacks with handwaving to standards that are outmoded in the hope that people weren't around for 3.2. Attributes are wrong for 3.2 under 'body', the 'style' attribute wasn't around, you aren't encoding ampersands (hair splitting, I know) and what the hell is a NOBR tag?
Slap in a 4.0 transitional DTD and stop fannying around waving that arm.
"Honestly XHTML will probably just save us a little bandwidth"
Looking at this page alone, removing the inline CSS and using classes will save some, font tags another percentage...overall, I think probably about 25% of your bandwidth as long as you use a CSS cascade and don't get caught with horrendous classitis. XHTML is stripped down to the bare essentials for semantic markup, and nothing in slashdot appear to be semantic.
"That's a fun experiment but of course it's very different to change the code to emit HTML to a different standard."
Yes, you do it in the scripts, but first you start with a plan. You could consider using templates, too, although they tend to multiply out of control unless you have a planned development.
"XHTML theme"
A 'theme'? Jesus, this sounds promising...
"OK, resume flaming us and our sucky HTML"
Honeybunch, the only reason that people say these things is that there are actually some commercial professionals on here that would be happy to lend a hand, but you have no coherent method of farming out the work, let alone organising it. The word 'community' means more than the bunch of names in the authentication database.
"Every time the FTC or whatever government agency shuts down a spammer, how many more will pop up to fill the void?"
That's why you need to take the issue up with the company/entity that profits from the spam as well as the spammer. God knows that enough of them are actually *illegal* anyway.
But I won't believe that they're doing anything about the problem until they seriously start to go after the spammers acting illegally. It's not like it's that difficult to trace them.
I was going to moderate you, then saw your .sig.
They didn't mean a network connection.
"But the firearm the average person could/would own was fully comperable to the weaponry of the goverments professional soliders."
Artillery? I'd also point out that a muzzle loading musket is something you tended to deploy 'en masse' due to it's terrible range, making the average person 'cannon fodder' when facing the military. Incidentally, musket blocks need order to be even partially effective.
Compare and contrast with an AR15 in both effective range, rate of fire and accuracy, and you could _destroy_ a musket block before they became effective. That will never have occurred to the founding fathers, let alone such innovations as the LAW.
"Therefore all of these technologies should not benifit from first amendment protection?"
An interesting point, given that national boundaries are completely blurred on the Internet, and all media is liable to amendments that have revised exactly how free 'free speech' actually is. I assume that slander and libel both circumvent the freedom to say anything you want?
Can I also counter that with whether you consider that certain people should be counted as 3/5 of a free man, or can we agree that the document has NEEDED to change from time to time?
"second amendment refers to the govenment's permission to form militias, I believe to be incorrect for several reasons."
The largest being a semantical distinction on the language used?
I take the point and agree with you that I don't recall the language being used elsewhere (and that semantical construction of the time was _precise_, something that does get lost today), despite my hand-waving, but will also point out that this meant that anyone who interpreted the word 'tyranny' as being forced to do something you didn't want to do means license to take potshots at anyone, as happened with the first incarnations of the US Government. Like terrorism, 'tyranny' could become a word that people hang a lot more meaning on rather than dictatorship.
The point I'm trying to get to is that I'm extremely happy with Americans offing each other in creative ways. In Britain, people do it all the time. What I'm not happy about is the constant referrels back to a document that _has_ been revised in the past, or the idea that the founding fathers wanted everyone to have easy access to weaponry _without_ caveats as to it's use. For one thing, it's shattered democracy through the actions of assassins.
"TNT screwed JMS around so much, shuffled the order, wanted lots more sex + violence etc."
n ity's-lovable-quirkiness".
That makes a certain amount of sense, but I know the problem I had with it. The incidental music was completely off. It's hard to explain, but the music was frequently keyed to a mournful sound when the action or script needed something more.
I may be missing the added sex and violence...it certainly doesn't look anymore or less violent or flesh-flecked than Bab5 did.
I also question the now ubiquitous "female-alien-with-past-coming-to-terms-with-huma
I was almost expecting 'What is this human thing you call "The nasty"?'
"Doesn't make more households safer."
My point. Read the rest of the thread.
What Americans may not realise was that UK ownership meant NOT keeping a loaded pistol under your pillow.
"Perhaps a concerned citizen will purchase one of these stolen guns for the protection of his/her family."
Concerned citizen would then face a hefty book thrown at him for breaking extremely strict gunlaws, and leave his family visiting him in Wandsworth. Personally I rely on a sturdy bit of 2 by 2 and a sure knowledge that a bit of wood is only a weapon in implementation, rather than design.
"As an American, I have to say I agree with your points."
As a Briton, I'll ask you to shove over a bit on the tailslide to hell.
"The economy is loaded with debt - both consumer and governmental - on an incredible scale."
As is ours. Interest rates are rising, and we've had a fairly mild time of the last few years because people are not saving for pensions. Both the SEC and the Bank of England have been scathing about the performance of traders.
"The US dollar is due to collapse, dramatically lowering the standard of living for most Americans."
I don't think the currency would ever collapse; no government would allow it, and even when we had a run on trading the pound, we printed more until it was obvious that we were being raided. Several million wiped off the value of the currency in a little under 24 hours, but we're still around.
OTOH, there is a western tradition of redefining value by changing the balance of trade or demanding concession.
"Our dependance on petroleum continues to increase."
This should frighten everyone. Apart from being dependent on Middle Eastern concerns (despite reinvestment back into the nations), we're approaching the death of Fossil Fuels. I'm mindful that this has been mentioned before, but we're inside the margin where we're ekeing out as much from drilling and mining technology as we can with no way of covering the shortfall. In addition, my own country is going to suffer horribly because of hard winters and a complete lack of space to undertake stopgap measures to 'bridge' to a hydrogen economy.
"When will our minorities actually realize that they have little or no hope of a better future?"
I think they already do. We have a situation where smuggled immigrants are 'working off' their passage to this country. A similar situation occurs across Europe that feeds prostitution and a growing black market in 'cash only' labour. IOW, slavery. I don't consider it to be much of step towards indentured servitude once the contracts start to stipulate more and more control over the employee.
"Our military is growing, consuming more and more resources and people."
Are you sure about this? Our military is recessing wildly.
"The middle class - key to any democracy - is being squeezed to oblivion."
Ditto, but this is mainly due to the short term promises becoming the electoral bargains. The constant cry of 'they'll raise taxes' is becoming quite annoying because _all_ governments raise taxes, be it overtly through raising taxes, or devaluing currency.
"Our appointed president will likely win the next election through slandering his opponent, bringing four more years of secrecy and gifts to corporations."
That would be bad for everyone, and bear in mind that the Tony Blair re-election campaign has asked the Bush Administration to stop mentioning 'my good friend Tony Blair', because his polls take a nosedive. I hope Kerry wins, but only because he's 'Not Bush', which is a feeling I'm seeing more and more of. The trouble is that this, and 'going negative' are degenerate politics, and I loathe the idea of simply choosing the lesser of two evils. This is a horrendous state for the west to be in.
"The religious right has continued a century-old campaign to eradicate evolution in the classroom;"
When I started to find out about this being the case, I was astounded that people are standing for it. If the religious right is that powerful in terms of voting blocks, then there needs to be election reform to stop religion affecting elections. This is the very thing that separating church and state was about. What the hell is happening with the education system if creationism is on a direct par with evolution? What next, the tooth fairy?
" Our arrogance, hubris, is the key to our destruction. And I think it's coming much faster than most people realize."
" And Chicken Littles such as yourself have been saying that for the last 50 years."
Now that's foresight. But answer a couple of questions;
How much of the world's output of petroleum does the US use?
How large is the current pensionable population in the US?
How large is the pensionable population going to be in fifteen years time?
Those are the telling questions for the moment.
"But the U.S. does have a point that recently it has represented the west and traditionally the west has made the quality of life better for the rest of the world."
In terms of local taxation not under colonial rule, yes, but usually those QoL increases have come at great cost, and the idea of an altruistic west starts to stagger a little when you consider what the balance of the equation is. Never consider trade to be philanthropy.
"but really when you think about all the people who won't need to die because their fire went out and there is no lightning around it makes sense."
People did not only use 'lightning' strikes as a method of producing fire and survived adequately up to that time; regarding the cost, I do actually have a good idea of how much Manhatten was sold for...
The thing is that it rapidly becomes a question of 'value'...slaves are a readily reproducing crop for slavers...
"production of information"
Let me just say that not everything is information. I know that pure physics survives on the concept of information, but realities such as grain are physical quantities rather than abstracts, and abstracting will never work when applied to the world itself.
"basically leave them developing tech"
Not while the US is trying to create wall gardens of intellectual property while using it's trading power to batter it's way into national law. Look at recent adoption of DMCA-like law in Australia, then look for the trade concessions. That's overt influence, and exactly the thing that causes extremists to start pointing fingers.
"You're not American are you? It's so hard to tell."
It's the accent.
"Let me ask where your country is on this list."
Fifth, hun. Now compare it to per capita. Take your time.
"Now where would I get that idea?"
Selective editing to match a given point of view.
The main point you missed is that you cannot sustain consumption and maintain low inflation. That's why the fifth country on your list is raising interest rates and looking at the looming problems connected with raising the bar on £1 trillion of personal debt.
"So, according to my buddy in England who I just IMed he says that's not true. He says to my question "how hard is it to get a gun license", "not so hard as long as you are clean, paperwork mostly""
No handguns. Handguns are illegal. No automatic weaponry, nothing that can be classed as an assualt rifle. In fact, you're pretty much limited to match rifles and shotguns. The Shotgun license requires that you store the guns in a locked metal cabinet separate from the firing pins and ammunition, and you can be spot inspected at any time.
" I notice on the page you link that England has a high rate of muggings and such."
Yeah, but they don't involve guns on the whole. Most of the time it's a bloke with a knife, and we're also prohibited from carrying a knife over four inches in length, and definately for 'self-defence' purposes. The high rate of muggings is usually for mobile phones, and something that shows a shift in social importance.
"Fit an proper is defined as not mentally ill, not a recently released (i.e. ten years) felon and that he's able to properly secure his weapons."
Given the shifting sands of what constitutes 'mental illness' and you can probably get a handle on why we in Britain are generally worried as hell by how tooled up America actually is. The guy who kicked off the Section 1 ban, Micheal Ryan, actually got all his arms together and wondered up a high street shooting at people before ending up in a school. He was licensed, but had emotional problems that wouldn't have been classified as mental illness unless he'd gone for evaluation.
The major reason that we're antsy is simply the desire to own a mechanism for killing people betrays a desire to own mechanisms for killing people. Gun fetishism. Especially worrying if people think that's where their power lies.
"This is a red herring and I wish gun rights folks (as I myself am) would stop using it."
Indeed. Because mainly the only way to fight the system is by using the system, rather than think there's a 'short circuit' to removing 'tyranny'. The constitution is fairly loose on actual definitions as to what constitutes 'tyranny' and is almost certainly a jibe at monarchism.
"The second ammendment is designed to allow the states to form militias"
Which was going to be the only way that the fledgling government would have been able to fight a concerted attack by the 'Old world' at the time. A lot of the constitution was written during a particular time and has not aged that well. Certainly the arms they were considering did not include armour-piercing rounds from a fully automatic weapon.
America itself has a problem in trying to control nuclear proliferation if it's going to dally about trying to 'trim' Billy-Joe Bob's arsenal
"You can crack a DVD player to burn discs?"
Nope, it's breathless reporting of DeCSS by someone who gets marks for spelling rather than thinking.
" ...and not the technologically adept."
Which is why there's a black market service industry springing up to help, surprisingly not backed by organised crime, but generally of people helping out other people. In fact, the black market has rapidly become the 'real' P2P network.
However, I'm hoping that they do this, then it removes the excuse of 'piracy' from the crappy DVD sales of 'Gigli'.
"Yep, sounds like pay-per-view to me."
We knew it was coming. Hell, even the idea of closing the analog loop was intended to push them in the direction of higher control, but personally I can live without TV if it comes to that, and this could be the death knell for media in general; people aren't necessarily very politically aware, but start cutting into their TV time....